Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Good little color: "Next year marks a millennium since the sermon given in 1014 by Archbishop Wulfstan in York where he declared that 'the world is in a rush and is getting close to its end'" (ht http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/12/we-dont-want-to-believe-it-but-things-really-are-getting-better/)

Love his notion of "tight-loose" forms conducive to "orchestrated twists of fate". This is essential Garcia in a very fecund period.

Reading Notes

Interview took place at a film lab in Marin County #The
Movie. Note took place after 3/23/75, but before whatever needed to happen for
a May deadline. Because Jerry went on the road with Legion of Mary and was gone
the first three weeks of April, I have to say that this was probably the last week in March 1975.

Garcia hopes to have The Movie “done and maybe out by around
October, but it could go longer than that – there’s a lot of film” (Simon 1975,
52). He speaks more about the film, how they have to work through the dreaded
middlemen, trying to do the distribution with integrity. Talks about the idea
behind it, how it tries to capture the GD concert experience in part as a
substitute for the band touring live. He
explicitly talks about this as an alternative to touring. It’d be less
expensive, and you don’t have to expose fans to hassles, including the ultimate
hassle, the police power (Simon 1975, 52-53). #The Movie

JG on The Movie: “On the level of ideas, and just in terms
of something to do as an artist, it represents a new level of interest and
development for me. I enjoy films. I’ve been a film buff for a long time and
all that – it’s neat to be kind of forced into making a movie” (Simon 1975,
53). #The Movie

They are working on Blues For Allah, so this could be
February-March. Not sure I know when film work starts? NB from below, this is
after 3/23/75. Sometime between then and a deadline for May 1975 issue. I am
not sure I knew when JG started working on The Movie. # The Movie

Workaholism, life balance: NAJ: You’re also doing a solo
album and touring with Merl Saunders. In that you have so many projects at
once, how do you channel your energy so productively? JG: “Well, things tend to
work and overlap, generally speaking. I wouldn’t really be able to concentrate
on sitting in front of a movie editing device for eight hours a day; I can do
it pretty easily for six, though. I feel my attention is on it and I can do a
good job keeping up with it. I like to play music in a studio situation – that can
also hold attention for six or eight hours. If I’m on the road, I’m not doing
anything during the day; I’m playing evenings. So during the day is a time
which is convenient to compose. I might sit around an hour a day just playing
the guitar and practicing and maybe learn something and maybe some ideas would
come out that are like songs. That represents maybe two or three hours a day on
the road where nothing else is happening but television and a gig that night.
Usually a gig will take maybe four or five hours, total time actually playing
maybe two of those or two-and-a-half. It may look like more, but it isn’t
really that much” (Simon 1975, 54). This is a great #adayinthelife #1975

The interviewer is impressed with his productivity, which
Garcia explains away: “I’m crazed. I’m obsessed.” “People see you as a musical junkie,” the interviewer continues.
Garcia: “Yes, that’s as good a description as any” (Simon 1975, 54).

JG: “I prefer playing live for sure, just as an experience,
it’s definitely richer, mainly because it’s continuous. You play a note and you
can see where it goes, you can see what the response is, what the reaction is.
It’s reciprocal”, and a different energy than you get back from fellow players,
which is like “a room full of plumbers” (Simon 1975, 54).

Studio vs. live: “Because we play music, one of the forms
that music can go out in is therecord,
but it’s a distinct form and not necessarily a reflection of what we do, so we
just treat it for what it is. If you’re an artist, you might prefer to work in
lithographs, … though sometimes you do a water color [despite the fact that]
lithographs still might be what you get off on the most. But if you have to do
a water color, you do a water color” (Simon 1975, 54). #official releases

Why did GD stop touring. The amount of gig money was not
enough to move the band around, develop what they wanted to develop, and pay
everybody. “We had a huge organization with a colossal overhead on a weekly
[54-55] basis. So, past a certain point, we were really working to keep the
thing going, rather than working to improve it or working because it was
joyful. … We were interested in doing stuff that’s joyful or fun, y’know, then
how could we reconcile that with economic survival, how could we work
and have a good time and also pay the bills? We didn’t have that
together.” Also the remoteness and anomie of playing large venues, “creating an
unpleasant situation for the audience” … “We don’t want people to be busted at
our concerts, we don’t want them to be uncomfortable or any of those things …” “Also,
it’s basically sort of de-humanizing to travel [jgmf yes! air travel dessicates the human soul] the way you have to
travel in a rock-and-roll band, and the quality of life on the road is pretty
slim.” (Simon 1975, 55). #hiatus

More on hiatus: “Mainly, however, , it has to do with
economics and the fact that we’ve been doing it for ten years, and we haven’t
spent any time away from it. That’s a long time to do anything. So we’ve just
decided to stop before it overwhelms us. Now we’re trying to consciously see
what the next step is for us. We don’t want to go into the success
cul-de-sac…
we don’t like that place. Yet, it’s not possible for us to really do something
that would be totally altruistic, like going and playing free everywhere. What
we really need is a subsidy.The
government should subsidize us and we should be like a national resources”
(Simon 1975, 55). #hiatus

Refers to Kezar benefit “recently”, so after 3/23/75 (p.55).

GD wants to play live again, but trying to figure the
format. “One possible fantasy that we’ve thought of is moving toward playing at
a more or less permanent musical fixture with the possibility of eventually
building a place that could be like a permanent performance center that could
be designed around us and our specific ideas” (Simon 1975, 55). Maybe do it two
months out of the year. Prefiguring “Terrapin Station” and, now, Leshtopia.

Do you feel ripped off by tapers? JG: “Not particularly. I
think it’s OK, if people like it, they can certainly keep doing it. I don’t
have any desire to control people as to what they are doing, or what they have …
there’s something to be said for being able to record an experience that you’ve
liked, or being able to obtain a recording of it. Actually, we all have that
stuff, too, in our own collection of tapes. My responsibility to the notes is
over after I’ve played them; at that point, I don’t care where they go
[laughs], they’ve left home, y’know?” (Simon 1975, 56) #tapers

Asked a question about signaling musical intuitions within
the group, he offers a beautiful interpretation of creative collective action: “A
lot of it is miracles and that’s part of what creating new forms has to do
with; it has to do with creating a situation where miracles can happen, in
which amazing coincidences can happen, so that all of a sudden you’re in a new
musical space. That’s the challenge of coming up with structures that are loose-tight, you know what I mean?” [JGMF my goodness … Garcia is a sophisticated institutional theorist!]
They have an element of looseness to them which means they can expand in any
direction or go anywhere from anywhere, or come from anywhere, but they also
have enough form so that we can lock back into something. It really has to do
with the element of what’s knowable and known and what isn’t known and what isn’t
knowable and what can be invented on the spot. There’s a delicate balance in
there and since we’re dealing with several consciousnesses at the same time,
everybody goes through their individual changes, that those times when
everybody is up for it and everybody feels right about it and the form provides
openings, then miracles can happen, amazing miracles. That’s what we’re in it
for, that’s one of the reasons that we do it is for those moments of ahhh …
unexpected joy, just amazing stuff. … Orchestrated
twists of fate” (Simon 1975, 56) #creation #institutions #dualities
#collective improvisation

Quick note about that nice line “orchestrated twists of fate”:
Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks had some out January 1975, I think, so “Simple
Twist Of Fate” seems to have entered Jerry’s consciousness right away. He’d
start playing it xxx TJS. #songs-S

They took 19 or 20 days to complete Workingman’s, but that has been their most “significant” album,
scare quotes Jerry’s (Simon 1975, 57). That was going on while the New Orleans
bust scene was “hanging over our heads”. “With American Beauty there was a rash of parent deaths where everybody’s
parents croaked in the space of about two or three months. We were working on
that and it was just incredible. It was just like tragedy-city --bad news every day, really” (Simon 1975, 57).
#official releases, #GD #dualities

Working with Hunter. Garcia’s a better editor than writer.
Hunter finds the words for Garcia. “We don’t clash in terms of our egos and we
both tend to focus on our work rather than on ourselves so it works out to be
very comfortable.” #Robert Hunter

“I have this hangup about songs. I’m fascinated by fragments
because of my involvement in traditional music – there’s a lot of things around
that are fragments of songs, and they’ll be this tantalizing glimpse of two or
three verses of what was originally a thirty-verse extravaganza, and there will
be two or three remaining stanzas in the tradition and you read them or hear
them and they’re just utterly mysterious and evocative for odd reasons at
different times” (Simon 1975, 57) [jgmf think Whiskey In The Jar] #songs

What musical influences interests? “Everyone, everything,
all music. I’m not particularly attached to any one idea or format, I just
appreciate whatever is good. It’s whatever I hear, endless numbers of anonymous
musicians whom I don’t know on the radio and stuff have influenced me, not to
mention all the people who are well known whose names I do now. They’ve
influenced me, too. I listen to everything” (Simon 1975, 57). Such a sponge.

In his playing, there’s a sound he is wishing he could hear,
a sound he is searching form, “maybe just a little snatch of a guitar player on
some record or just a moment … and there’s something about it that says ‘that
is a door to something’ – I can’t really explain it, it’s emotional and it goes
back to my earliest years, it’s that deep. It just is me really selecting out
of the Universe stuff that’s part of that sound. It’s a thing that sometimes I
hear very clearly and sometimes I Don’t hear at all, but it has produced by
whole development” (Simon 1975, 58). #sounds

Early musical learning: I think Troy 1994 is wrong when he
says Garcia had piano lessons, but I need to double-check. Here Garcia responds
to a question about early picking up a guitar: “No, I didn’t, unfortunately; I
wish I had. I got my first guitar when I was fifteen” (Simon 1975, 58).

“I didn’t really start .. working at the guitar until I was about twenty-three” (Simon 1975,
58). This dates it to electric period, ca. 1965.

“Feel that I’m a person that doesn’t have a great amount of
talent. What I’ve learned, I’ve had to really work at learning. It’s been a
hassle, basically. That’s one of the reasons I play a lot. I need to play a lot
just to keep myself together, just to keep my chops together” (Simon 1975, 58).
#workaholism

Question about channeling the Universe. Garcia: “I can’t say
that there’s a certain sense when I am transformed, you know, in the sense that
all of a sudden God is speaking through my strings … It’s more like if you’re
real lucky, and practice and play a lot and try to feel right and everybody
wants for it to happen, then there’s a possibility that special things will
happen” (Simon 1975, 58). #workaholism

NAJ: “Do you have much ego identification with Jerry Garcia
as a rock star or is music your main form of meditation?” Garcia: “Music is my
yoga. If there is a yoga, that’s it. Practicing and keeping my muscles
together, that is like what I would relate to a physical yoga, a certain amount
of hours every day. Life is my yoga, too, but I’ve been a spiritual dilettante
off and on through the years, trying various things at various times, and I
firmly believe that every avenue that leads to higher consciousness does lead to higher consciousness. If
you think it does, it does. If you put energy into it on a daily basis, no
matter what it is, some discipline … I believe it will work. I believe that it’s
within the power of the mind and consciousness to do that” (Simon 1975, 59).

Question about interviewing: “I can’t really do anything but
lie, all talking is lying, and I’m lying now, and that’s true, too. … go and
hear me play, that’s me, that’s what I have to say, that’s the form my thoughts
have taken, so I haven’t put that much energy into really communicating
verbally. It’s all open to misinterpretation” (Simon 1975, 59).

Ruth Marie Clifford - married 1934-- 121 Amazon Avenue, San Francisco, in the Excelsior District -- Ca.
1937 Jose’s music career came to an end -- 1937 Jose bought a tavern Four
Hundred Club at 400 First Street, corner of Harrison near Bay Bridge (Troy
1994, 2).

Attending Saturday classes and summer sessions at the California School
of Fine Arts in North Beach (beatniks!) Troy 1994, 11-13

heard and liked Big Bill Broonzy. Troy 1994, 13

JG’s first guitar idol was Chuck Berry Troy 1994, 15

Ca. age 15, moved to Cazadero, attended Analy HS in Sebastopol. Played
a gig: piano, two saxes, a bass, and his guitar. Won a contest and got to
record a song. Did Bill Doggett’s “Raunchy”. Troy 1994, 15

while at Presidio, met a country guitar player who got him into
finger-picking. Troy 1994, 17

“it was not in his nature to have several girlfriends at one time.” ST
says this lasted until present. “This is a trait that he seems to have
maintained to the present … he has been married three times and has had a number
of affairs, but when the relationship has been right, he has stuck with it.” Troy
1994, 25

Charlotte Daigle: “he really did things on his own terms, the way he wanted
to, without a lot of concern about what he should do or what people wanted him
to do. He listened to his inner voice.” Troy 1994, 26

February 1961 Paul Speegle death. Studebaker Golden Hawk. Jerry had
switched places with Paul just before the accident. P. 27: JG: “That’s where my
life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was
idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second
chance. Then I got serious.” And he got serious about music, giving up art. Troy
1994, 26-27 #1961

“He chose music because he liked the interaction with other people that it provided.” Music had
other players and an audience. Later on, Garcia would say that “the symbiotic
relationship of band and audience was integral to his musical experience, what
made it come alive for him” (Troy 1994, 27).

Marshall Leicester got him back into bluegrass. Introduced him to the
New Lost City Ramblers. Troy 1994, 28

GD split into two camps: Gar and Lesh more improvisational, Weir and
Pigpen on the other side, more structured and song oriented. Troy 1994, 119

“to play the music that he had decided on, Garcia formed the group
Mickey Hart and the Hartbeats”. Troy 1994, 120

TC: “Mickey Hart and the Hartbeats was a period of time when Garcia and
Lesh were into a more extended improvisation trip, which was exactly what Weir
and Pigpen were less into.” Troy 1994, 121

“The Hartbeats was an interesting side trip for Garcia, but it wasn’t
enough by itself to hold his attention.” Liked the GD dynamics. “However, the
short break opened his eyes to the advantages of playing with other musicians
when his schedule would allow it, and in 1969 he began doing more of that. This
extracurricular performing allowed Garcia to scratch his musical itches in a
way – he could play music he liked that the Dead didn’t ordinarily do, and he
could try out new instruments and new techniques.” Troy 1994, 121

TC was brought in as part of the GD’s move toward more experimentation.
Troy 1994, 122

LAG strike, 8/1/69. Garcia couldn’t cross the picket line because of
his union sympathies, inherited from his grandmother. When asked why he didn’t
cross, he told McNally: “My grandmother.” Troy 1994, 126

JG credited CSN with helping the GD’s vocal harmonies. Troy 1994, 133

JG: “I play music because I love music, … and all my life I’ve loved
music.” Troy 1994, 135

“one of his joys was simply putting together an impromptu group,
finding a willing watering hole, and filling the space with music. He explained
‘I’m a total junkie when it comes to
playing. I just have to play. And when we’re off the road I get itchy, and a
bar’s just like the perfect opportunity to get loose and play all night.” Troy
1994, 141

“he clearly preferred playing with other
musicians in front of an audience.
‘Rather than sit home and practice, scales and stuff, which I do when I’m
together enough to do it, I go out and play because playing music is more
enjoyable to me than sitting home and playing scales.” Troy 1994, 142

Merl signed with Fantasy Records in 1965. Troy 1994, 143

PERRO as cross-pollination. Troy 1994, 145

“Another reason for Jerry to spend time away from the Grateful Dead was
that he could work out his own personal musical dreams that the other members
of the band might have stunted.” Togotigi. Troy 1994, 146

9/22/72: “Playing with Saunders meant so much to Garcia that he even
flew back from New York in the middle of a GD tour to play a benefit concert
with him at BCT on September 22 [1972].” Troy 1994, 153

Rakow’s plan in So What papers approved on 4/19/73. “In April 1973
Grateful Dead Records was set up, co-owned by all the voting members of the
organization, with Rakow as president and general manager. A second label,
Round Records, owned fifty-fifty by Garcia and Rakow, was set up to [156]
handle solo projects” (Troy 1994, 155-156)

OAITW Troy 1994, 158

JG quotes (maybe from splendor in the bluegrass or something) early
1973 re OAITW: “we got together a little over a month ago, started playing, and
then decided, ‘Shit, why don’t we play a few bars and see what happens?’ We’re
thinking about finding a fiddle player and then doing some of the bluegrass
festivals this summer. … That’d be a lot of fun.” NB the “Bluegrass at
Grisman’s” thing confirms that this is more or less exactly how it happened! Troy
1994, 158

“In 1972 and 1973, the Garcia and Saunders Band did three albums for
Fantasy Records –Heavy Turbulence, Fire Up, and Live at Keystone.” Troy 1994, 159

JG is the one who pushed Merl to sing! Merl: “He also got me singing.
We’d come off a tour and he’d say, ‘Man, you gotta help me out singing.’ I
didn’t think I could sing, but I figured if Jerry could sing, I could sing. …
That’s how I started singing.” Troy 1994, 160

re GD hiatus. JG: “It had turned into a thing that was out of our
control, and nobody was really doing it because they liked it. We were doing it
because we had to.” NB solo stuff
would always more or less be in his control. Troy 1994, 167

The “Imagine” story, per Merl: Fall 1971, “I was at Fantasy Records
that fall with Garcia, Tom Fogerty, John Kahn and Bill Vitt to record my album.
This guy at the studio had a promotional copy of the record.” This is consistent
with them playing it September 1971. Troy 1994, 169

no details on end of LOM: “in the summer of 1975 the two musicians
decided to go their own way.” Troy 1994, 169

Deborah Koons. JG had met her in Cincinnati during a tour (December
1973?). Troy 1994, 170

“The majority of Garcia’s third solo LP, Reflections, was also recorded at Weir’s studio in 1975.” I don’t
think so – His Master’s Wheels. Troy 1994, 173

Jerry Garcia Band. Troy 1994, 175

Keith and Donna join JGB. Kahn: “Keith lived over on Paradise Drive [in
Corte Madera], and we used to play over there all the time. He had a room
downstairs that was set up so we could just go in and play … we’d get together
just about every night and [176] play. … We had Dylan songbooks and we’d do
stuff like play everything from Blonde on
Blonde. Then we’d do all sorts of Beatles songs. It was great.” Troy 1994,
175: 1975,

“Playing with this group [JGB] was like sitting in a favorite old easy
chair for Garcia. He claimed, ‘I haven’t been as happy with any little performing
group since Old and In the Way in terms of feeling this is really harmonious.” Comfort, JGB as harmonious. Contrast with GD: challenge, dissonance. Troy 1994, 176

late 1978, Jerry’s voice ragged, “a condition exacerbated by the three
packs of unfiltered Camels he smoked every day and by his chronic use of central
nervous system stimulants.” Troy 1994, 190

Reconstruction “played primarily black music – funk, jazz, soul, blues
and reggae. … But Garcia’s desire to have his own band as a creative outlet was
strong”, so we got the Ozzie JGB. Troy 1994, 193

Seals “was suggested to Garcia by Kahn, who had met Melvin through
Maria Muldaur. A Bay Area native, Seals had spent much of his life involved
with the music of the black Baptist church. … his roots were firmly in gospel
music, and he found inspiration in the music of the church. The gospel
influence that Seals brought to the Garcia Band was very much to Garcia’s
liking” Troy 1994, 199

GD played 71 shows, sold out all but six, and grossed $11.5 million in
1985. Troy 1994, 205

Merl says that he was on a beach in the Caribbean, and suffered some
kind of heat stroke at precisely the same moment that Jerry was short
circuiting (July 10, 1986). Troy 1994, 207-208

more on friends and the coma. David Nelson. Merl: “I started walking
with him every day from the house out to the road and back to the house. [211]
We started practicing five minutes a day.” Troy 1994, 210

Graham on Garcia wanting to play Broadway: “One month prior [Garcia
was] playing five sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden … that’s 100,000
people. For the lead guitarist of that same group to play eighteen shows at a
1,400 seat theater, obviously there’s a desire to do this, not a need to do
this. Since the very first day I met him, he has not changed his seemingly unquenchable thirst to just play.”
Troy 1994, 223

Blues from the Rainforest
began recording March 1989. Troy 1994, 231

Midland “had been fighting a drug problem for more than a year and had
been rushed to the hospital when he almost overdosed the prior December
[1989].” Troy 1994, 233

Garcia/Grisman earned a
Grammy nomination and sold more than 100,000 copies. Troy 1994, 239

JG, ca. 1992: “Ideally I’d have the Dead play two nights a week, play
bluegrass two nights a week, and play with my band two nights, and on the other
day go to a movie.” That doesn’t seem like too much to ask for! Such simple
tastes! Troy 1994, 239

1991, GD grossed $34.7 million. Troy 1994, 245

“for a couple of months in early 1993 Garcia was seeing Barbara Meier …
but in the spring he reconnected with Deborah Koons.” Troy 1994, 250.

Troy, Sandy. 1991. One More Saturday
Night: Reflections with the Grateful Dead, Dead Family, and Dead Heads. New
York: St. Martin’s Press.

Reading Notes

“by the fall of 1974 the band’s business ventures began to
unravel” (Troy 1991, 27). #business

JG and MG moved in together early 1967 (Troy 1991, 68).
#women

#v-Carousel as described by MG: “It was a beautiful place;
nobody could believe it. It had wooden floors, a fairly low ceiling, plus sets
of French doors that opened to let in fresh air. It also had beautiful gold
framed mirrors, strange 50’s light fixtures, weird old tables, and red push
sofas. It even had a great kitchen and we served dinner, too. (MG in Troy 1991,
91).

#houses #Olompali interview with Rock Scully says when they
left Haight they went to Camp Lagunitas, then moved to Olompali. But I think he’s
confused. “Olompali was a big old Spanish estate that had a swimming pool, some
outbuildings with bedrooms, and enough space so that we all could live there
and have a good time. We would [122] get the word out that we were having a
party and people would come and jam. It wasn’t a set thing where the Dead would
play, but it was a jam session where musicians from the Airplane, Quicksilver,
the Charlatans would jam with us. It was a chance for all our friends from the
City to come and hang out with us outdoors in the sunshine. We’d set up the
stage between the house and the pool and people would being [sic] doing acid
and hanging out by the pool naked. Sometimes there would be several hundred
people partying” (Rock Scully in Troy 1991, 120, 122).

ST: How did the concept of AEWTGD come about? Rock: “It came
about because Jerry was playing pedal steel, and digging it. John Dawson knew
Jerry and asked him to play pedal steel in the New Riders. “An Evening With The
Grateful Dead” worked conceptually because the music of both bands went well
together. It stopped being a concept when Jerry realized that playing pedal
steel was screwing with his electric guitar playing. The instruments were so
different from each [other] that his guitar playing was suffering” (Rock Scully
in Troy 1991, 124). #NRPS #pedal steel

Rock on #NRPS: “There wasn’t really one [New Riders] manager.”
Rock involved first album and Powerglide. “I remember when the New Riders were
living in my house. That picture on the back of the first album, when the band
is leaning on the banister, was actually in my house in Kentfield. I guess you
could say I was managing them at the time because pretty much all their gigs were
with the Dead because Jerry was playing with them. When they got Buddy Cage
they started doing shows on their own. Then Dale Franklin and Jon McIntire
became their managers for a time” (Scully in Troy 1991, 125).

#v-Carousel Healy “It held about eight hundred people …
though we would put as many in there as we could get. It was an old ballroom
left over from the Swing era. It was owned by an Irishman.” JG: “They had Irish
music there on Thursday nights.” DH: “That’s all they had in there. Aside from
that it was closed all the time, and had been closed down right after the Swing
[145] era. It was still in its original state, right out of the ‘20s, right
down to the chandeliers in the place. The interior was beautiful. It wasn’t at
all torn up: it was in mind condition.” (in Troy 1991, 144-145).

Lesh on Watkins Glen, the Dead had to run the show, in spite
of promoters. “The biggest hassle was convincing the Band to come out and play.
Hey man, it’s just down the road a piece, come on out and play. What can you
lose? They played great!” (Lesh in Troy 1991, 153).

Constanten: “That’s a chance you have to take in courting
serendipity – sometimes serendipity comes to grace your performances and
sometimes not” (TC in Troy 1991, 156).

The John “Marmaduke” Dawson chapter (Troy 1991, 164-175) is
very important material.

Dawson says he was around in 1958-59, taking guitar lessons
from a lady in Palo Alto, when Jerry was with Sara. So that would be 1963. “They
dropped in at a guitar thing that my guitar teacher was having at her house one
night. I didn’t really meet him until later on at a club called The Tangent” in
Palo Alto (Dawson in Troy 1991, 165). Met
Nelson at the Tangent (Troy 1991, 165).

Dawson: Rancho Olompali is a “place where all the Indians
used to hang out. There’s an Indian burial ground nearby. It’s quite a lovely
place. It had a big old mansion of a ranch house that they lived in for a while”
(Dawson in Troy 1991, 167).

Dawson got serious in spring of 1969: “I went with a bunch
of guys down to a place called Pinnacles National Monument, … and a group of us
ate a bunch of what we thought was mescaline but was some weird little chemical
cocktail that had some LSD in it. I had an experience on that particular
occasion and I made up my mind that I wanted to write songs more seriously and
learn how to sing more seriously. I liked the idea of being a country-western
singer and started picking up Buck Owens and Merle Haggard records to try to
learn how they were doing it.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 167).

“Hunter was going to try to be the bass player for a while
but he didn't have that many chops together. Bob Matthews tried out but he
wasn't able to pick up on the instrument quickly enough because all of the rest
of us had been playing for a long time. That's when Phil Lesh finally stepped
in and played bass with the New Riders.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 167). #NRPS

“What had happened is that I invited myself over to Garcia's
house one day after he had come back off the road with a brand-new pedal steel
guitar. He had stopped in Denver at a music store that had a bunch of pedal
steels in it. So he bought one and brought it back. I [[168] bumped into him at
the Dead's practice place in Novato near Hamilton Air Force Base. I asked Jerry
if I could come over to his house and listen to the steel guitar that he just bought.
He said I could come over later if I wanted to hear it. I brought my guitar
when I showed up so he would have something to accompany. I showed him a couple
of tunes that I had been working on and I got to listen to the pedal steel.
That little duet worked into a thing where Jerry asked me if he could come down
and practice his pedal steel at my coffee house gig in Menlo Park. I think it
was called The Underground and it was a hofbrau kind of thing where they would
carve you up a sandwich from a fresh cut of meat, right on the spot.” (Dawson
in Troy 1991, 167-168). #NRPS

“they just added Nelson and me to the Grateful Dead tour and
we came along with them that way. That's when we first got started on the national
scene and you heard us back there in 1970 on the East Coast at the Fillmore -
"An Evening with the Grateful Dead featuring the New Riders of the Purple
Sage” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 170). #AEWTGD

“That's when you only had to add Nelson's and my ticket to the
tour and you had a whole new five-piece band to open, which made it quite
handy. That got my songs exposed to a national audience a lot sooner than they
would have been otherwise. We also had a
gospel quartet that did some stuff. Nelson would play an acoustic and Bob
Weir, Jerry, and I would come out and would sing a couple of gospel tunes.”
(Dawson in Troy 1991, 170). I love he says “they had a gospel quartet”. A
self-contained hippie hootenanny. #AEWTGD

“Phil at some point said, "Hey, I don't want to do it
any more:· So that's when David Torbert joined the band.” (Dawson in Troy 1991,
170). #NRPS

“When we finally met another pedal steel guitar player in
the person of Buddy Cage on the ride across Canada in 1970, that gave Garcia a
chance to go back to just the Grateful Dead” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 171). #NRPS

Festival Express: “The Band was supposed to be on [the train]
but the only person from the Band that actually showed up and rode the train
was Rick Danko” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 171).

Port Chester February 1971 run Howard Stein painted the Cap
performance surface, and they were the New Riders of the Purple Stage! (Dawson
in Troy 1991, 173). #NRPS

Dawson: Garcia “is a picking junkie, first and foremost. He
would rather be playing than anything else” (Troy 1991, 174).

Took place in Atlanta 12/18/78, at the
Colony Court’s Savannah Suites hotel. Not sure the name address.

Jerry, with his “chemically lit” eyes, is grooving in this
interview.

Doesn’t want to talk about himself. He’s old news.

“Jerry is in a self-described ‘state of happiness’ (Abbott
1979, 34).

''I was a fuck-up in high school," Jerry says, easing
himself onto the couch. Outside, a hard rain threatens. Inside, Garcia is in
high animation, giggling and working over the past with a bantamweight's vigor.
"When I was a kid, I was a juvenile delinquent. My mom even moved me out
of the city to get me away from trouble. It didn't work. I couldn't stand high
school 'cause I was burning my bridges as I went along. But I didn't have any
way to go. I don't think I did any more than anybody else. It's just that I was
always getting caught-for fighting, drinking, all the stuff you're not supposed
to do. … I was involved in more complex ideas. I started reading Schopenhauer,
Heidegger and Kant when I was in the seventh grade. After that, school was
silly” (Abbott 1979, 34).

Unfiltered Camel

“there were gunfights in the halls, but I didn't fit into
that either. I was happening on a different plane entirely. That's one of the
reasons I got into drugs. In all that teenage craziness, it was the only good
trip around" (Abbott 1979, 34). #drugs

"I had been court­martialed twice and had tons of extra
duty and was restricted to barracks. I was just late all the time. 1 would miss
roll call. I had seven or eight or nine or ten AWOLs, which is a pretty darn
serious offense in the Army. So one day I'm called to the CO's office. No heavy
trip or anything. He says, 'Private Garcia, how would you like to get out of
the Army?' And I said, ‘I’d like it just fine.' Two weeks later I was out"
(Abbott 1979, 34). #army

Car accident changed his life, no more coasting.

"I was in a good automobile accident." Jerry grows
anxious. "I was with four other guys in an old Studebaker Golden Hawk-
supercharged engine, terrible suspension, ninety-plus miles an hour on a back
road and we hit these chatter-bar dividers. It was just Wham! We went flying, I
guess. All l know is that I was sitting in the car and that there was this ...
disturbance ... and the next thing, I was in a field. I went through the
windshield and landed far enough away from the car where I couldn't see it. It
was at night. It was very, very quiet, you know. It was like a complete break in continuity-from sitting in the car roaring
down the road to lying in a field wondering what had happened- nothing in
between." Anybody get hurt? "Yeah," Garcia says with genuine
awe. "One guy did die. He happened to be the most gifted of our little
group. It was like losing the golden boy, someone who had a lot of promise, the
person who had the most to offer" (Abbott 1979, 34).

"You were lucky," I suggest.

"Oh, yeah," Garcia agrees. "The car was like
a crumpled cigarette pack. It was almost unrecognizable. And there were my
shoes in it, dig? I had been thrown out of my shoes and through the
windshield." He pauses over the memory of a pair of scuffed Army-issues
lying on the floorboards of a violence sculpture. "That's
where my life began." He breathes. "Before
then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the
slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance."
[#why] He looks at me hard, his expression earnest, grateful, dead. "Then
I got serious.” Another toke. A deep suck of mortality. "I dig the
affirmation side of death. Death is one of those things that's been taken from
us as an experience. We hide it. As a result, it becomes fearful, scary,
because it's unknown. Really, man, it's the other side of being born"
(Abbott 1979, 34). #death

“Garcia is on his knees, praying to the coffee table. The
toot is vicious, cut with meth, not with quinine, and it’s enough to rip your
sinuses out. It goes straight to the forebrain – a howling blizzard of Insight
and Truth. The rush is, well, chilling; your scalp tingles, a hospital sourness
scours the back of your throat.Then a
Con Ed generator of electricity sizzles your synapses … Your smoke is tasty.
You are ready to Talk.” (Abbott 1979, 35). #drugs

“my most palpable experiences have all been psychedelics” …
there was one in particular, the ne plus
ultra trip, the apocalypse” at the end of what Jerry describes as his
psychedelic period” (Abbott 1979, 35). #drugs

"It featured countless-thousands, millions-- births and
deaths. The phoenix trip, you know. And in my consciousness, it went all the
way from, uh, insects to vegetables to mammals to civilizations-to organisms of
every sort."What happened?
''Everything," Garcia barks, drawing closer, the glint of his eyes grave
and dear. "For me, my trips began to take a different kind of form. The
first ones were visual, you know, patterns, colors, profound revelations,
'Yeah, I get it'- the standard stuff. Then I started going to the Acid Tests
and experiences were happening to more than one person at a time. They had this
telepathic quality. Then into that stepped another level which was between and
amongst the telepathic explosions. Between the flashes and surprises was this 'You're
almost getting it.' An urging. Then there was a presence which I think of as
the Teacher, which represents a higher order. There would be this feeling of déja vu. All these little bits of
input-people talking, certain sights-would start to coalesce: 'Damn, You Got
It! BOOM!' It took on this teacher-pupil relationship: Me and my other mind! … It
scared the shit out of me, man. It was like, What do you believe?' It removed
everything I was certain of. And in its place was a new set of circumstances.
And these circumstances were like pages in a book. They started moving until I
was living out a whole lifespan with all the intricacy of one's life, all the
way up to the moment of one's death. The final realizations, the summation” (Abbott
1979 35).

"Cosmic is the only word for it," he sighs.
"Nothing has happened in my life since then, man. Nothing was as
climactic, as complete as that." (Abbott 1979, 36). Everything after was anticlimax.

Story of a tripper with a big knife threatening JG on stage
at a ballroom (Abbott 1979, 36). The power of the crowd “comes somewhere close
to losing your will” (Abbott 1979, 36). #fascism

"I don't want to be a leader because I don't want to be
a mis-leader. I haven't put any safeguards there. I haven't paid the dues to be
responsible for leading people. The most I would want to do
would be to indicate, using my life as a model, that it's possible for you to,
uh, go for it.But following me is like a dead end street. There's nothing here but me.
I can't multiply fishes and loaves and turn water into wine” (Abbot 1979, 37).

"I remember going down to Watts Towers after the Watts Acid
Tests. It had been a hard night, I'd gone through a lot of heavy changes, and
it was dawn. I remember looking at this stuff. It was just junk. Nobody could
tear it down, so they made a monument out of it. I remember thinking that I'd rather have a life that gets me off while I'm living it
and leave nothing and not litter the world with concrete relics or ideas or
things that will hang you up” (Abbott 1979, 37).